


Small Gifts

by stardropdream



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:01:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9435131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: He gives her earrings one day, but it is not the first gift he's given her. (post series)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [songdances](https://archiveofourown.org/users/songdances/gifts).



> Heeeey finally wrote something. Finally! Been fighting a writer's block so apologies if there are any parts of this that read wonky. But! First fic of 2017 and it is a much overdo birthday gift for the lovely Ana. ♥ Enjoy bb.

The small box in her hands opens to a pair of simple earrings. She smiles before she quite knows she’s doing it – a simple, easy gesture. How strange, she thinks, to smile now after so many years of patience and quiet, of never knowing if her smile will be received as gentleness or as spite. 

He makes her smile so easily. 

“Do you like them?” he asks, and there is an edge of nervousness to his voice, something quiet and serene all the same, longing – still adjusting to the knowledge that they no longer need to long, that they can be like this forever, until their last breaths. 

She tilts the box a little so the tiny pearls catch the light. They are nothing like the earrings she favored for so long, three drops of pearls swirling around her ear. A gift from her mother, before her marriage, before leaving her home and never returning again, to live her days in cold palace walls with an even colder husband. She loved the pearl earrings because they reminded her of her mother, of her brother, of her home that is so very far away. 

“I love them,” she says, and the words fall easily from her mouth like small pearls. She tilts her chin up and smiles at him, sweet and simple, her dimples deepening. He sees the way his eyes light up as he looks at her in turn, and she closes her eyes as he puts the earrings in for her, his fingertips rough and soldier-worn, but gentle against the line of her jaw. Always so gentle. 

This is not the first gift that he has given her, though. Aside from love, the heavy weight in her heart, the lighter weight in her heart – it is the simple knowledge of having him there. She wears the earrings the next day, to prove to him that she loves them, that she loves him – even though neither are in doubt, least of all from him. His smile blooms across his face, brighter than the sun fading into the open windows at the council. She sits at the head, her minister at the opposite end and smiling at her.

There will be gossip, as there always is. As there has been since the moment she stopped wearing black – far too early, they think – or the moment she smiled at him and didn’t disguise the swell of love in her eyes, the tilt of her smile that meant promise and gentleness and _forever._

There are other small gifts that he gives her—

Being there. That he wears the blue ribbon she likes so much, tied into his hair, matching her own. 

That his first reaction is always to locate her in a room, to always let his eyes rest on her and never flicker away. To meet her eyes like it’s simple – that he’s seeing her, has always seen her, has always wanted to see her.

That he locates their son with that same ferocity, always aware of where he is, always gentle when he guides him. 

The burst of protectiveness that never goes away, even when he is stripped of his weapons. Their son crashes through a doorway with a loud shriek and she knows it to be a shout of laughter, but his hand still gropes for a sword that is no longer there, still stoops down to grab at him, protectively, as if even a chasing handmaid is enough to disrupt his peace – that he will never hesitate, that his hands will always be reaching and reaching—

Or, the quiet moments at night, when she slips into his room. That he lets her have this thrill, to be the one to find him, that he is always up and waiting for her, his hair curling at his chin and over his shoulders, his shirt untied. That he is always sitting and waiting for her.

Tonight, he is gazing down at his gun – a keepsake, he once joked, something he no longer needs. His thumbs sweep along the curling ivy inlaid in metal along the barrel and pommel. He looks up at her and his expression gentles, not surprised but not relieved, either – expected but unexpected to be caught like this. It is an expression she has seen before – usually when there are letters from the warfront, letters from a general he misses too much to ever put to words.

She lingers in the doorway until the door snaps shut and then she trails her body towards him. He sits up straighter, sucks in a small breath as she approaches, and then breathes out when she sits down beside him, her pearl earrings glowing in the candlelight. 

“Aramis?” she prompts, because she knows that expression, has grown to learn so many of Aramis’ expressions in the last months. 

“It’s strange,” he says, as if resuming a conversation they’ve been having for days, his eyes cast down upon his pistol. “I left the monastery sure that God wanted me to be a musketeer, that I would always be a musketeer.” 

It is not the first time he’s expressed this, either. But time is an ever-marching thing, and the absence is wide and knowing at times. There are musketeers still in Paris, but they are no one that Aramis knows – only the captain, who hand-picked these men to bolster the people’s musketeers. She knows he approved of her decision to disband and reform the musketeers, knows he supports her in so many ways, indiscriminately (another gift, that, to be supported and loved without question or condition), but the absence must weigh heavy on him so many times. 

“And yet I’m here,” he says, and smiles. “And I’m happy that I am,” he adds, although neither of them doubted his happiness and peace in being here. His thumbs sweep in an anxious gesture now, all the same. “But it’s strange. To be so far away from them all.” 

He looks up at her, to test her expression – and she smiles at him, sad and understanding. She knows the absence of friends – knows of her family, whom she will likely never see again or for some time, knows of Constance, who is still so far away but happy and in love. 

She covers her hand over Aramis’. His nervous thrumming of his thumb ceases. After a moment, he turns his hand up so that they are palm to palm, and then he twines their fingers together, interlocking. Firm and secure. Unconditional. 

This, too, is a gift – that he will trust her with this quiet, this uncertainty, this lingering sadness. 

She leans in and kisses the corner of his mouth. Then his jaw. He turns his head with a breath and kisses her properly, their mouths slanting together. She breathes out in a slow sigh. 

“Aramis,” she whispers, when they part, not wanting to abandon the thread of this conversation but longing to be closer. “It’s alright to miss the past.” 

He smiles at her, a fragile and quiet thing. He cups her cheek and she leans into the touch, her heart racing even from this, even after all this time – that she should have this, that she can have this, without condition. 

“I miss it and I don’t,” he confesses, and looks ashamed, his eyes flickering back down again. 

When he looks back up at her, he must see something in her expression to ease him, because he sighs out. 

Then says, “I would never trade my time here with you. And yet…” 

“I know,” she whispers, her heart racing – and thrilling at the thought that, even in this, this is something new she is learning about him. Once, such a thought might have uneased her, to think that she did not know him. Now she knows that there is a stretch of years unfurling, in which she can learn more and more new things about him. That there are things about her that he hasn’t yet learned. 

That they will continue to learn each other. That they will fall in love unendingly, a slow tumble further and further down. 

“It’s alright,” she tells him. 

She believes this. 

She tells him, “I’m here.” 

And she is. 

“I’ve got you,” she tells him, and he dips his head to rest against her shoulder. She runs her hand down his hair, his back, the curve of his spine.

He sinks into her. She holds him and cradles him, strings her hands down his body, underlines and understands every part of him. Kisses the crown of his head and lingers close. The smell of his hair, the slide of his hair, the feel of his body pressed to hers, the thump of his heart under her palm. 

“I’ve got you,” she tells him again and he shivers and believes her.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on [tumblr.](http://stardropdream.tumblr.com/)


End file.
